Soft, hydrophilic contact lenses are manufactured from hydrophilic polymeric materials such as copolymers of hydroxyethyl methacrylate, and may contain from 20 to 90 percent or more water, depending on polymer composition. Such lenses must be stored in a sterile aqueous solution, usually isotonic saline, to prevent dehydration and to maintain the lenses in a ready to wear condition.
Common practice has been for lens manufacturers to use a stoppered glass bottles as the storage and shipping container for each individual lens. The standard contact lens bottle is approximately 10 cc in volume, is sealed with a silicone stopper and provided with a metal foil overcap safety seal. Each bottle contains approximately 7 cc of saline and a single contact lens which is identified on the label of the bottle. When the lens is to be removed for fitting on a patient, the practitioner must first tear and remove the metal safety seal, then remove the stopper, and finally remove the lens with a plastic tweezer.
Packaging contact lenses in glass bottles is expensive due to the cost of bottles, stoppers and seals, and shipping is expensive due to the weight of the glass and saline. Bottles are also subject to breakage if accidentally dropped during handling, and removing the lens from the bottle with tweezers is inconvenient since the lens is nearly invisible when submerged in saline.
It is accordingly an object of the present invention to provide an improved package for storing, shipping and dispensing hydrophilic contact lenses. It is a further object of this invention to provide a lens package which allows for improved efficiencies in the lens manufacturing process. It is a yet further object of this invention to provide an inexpensive package which allows for convenient removal of the contact lens. These and other objects of this invention will be apparent from the ensuing description and claims.